"I'm an art professor, and last semester I embarked on an exciting new adventure by erasing Mac OS X from nearly all of the Macintoshes in our digital media lab and installing Ubuntu in its place. I began seriously planning this change last school year, when I realized how fully the current feature sets of free software programs could satisfy the technical needs of the students in my classes. I decided that the time had come to teach our undergraduate art students about free software programs such as the GIMP, Scribus, and Quanta Plus, instead of proprietary programs such as Photoshop, QuarkXpress, and Dreamweaver."

alcibiades hit it right on the head. I work at a university and a good university teaches concepts. It just doesnt train you how to use a piece of software. Take networking for example. I can teach anyone to configure a cisco router. However, if I teach them the concepts of networking, it wont matter if they are in front of Cisco, Extreme, or anyone elses equipment. They will still know what they need to do. Not to mention that a large part of the cost of running an IT department goes to software. Wouldnt it be nice if your tuition went down once instead of always up?